From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

This issue was present in Dark Souls 1, but at least backstabs got balanced.

 

Lawd, I love the High Poise/Leo Ring/Grand Lance/Invisible Weapon combo. Washing poles don't see it coming and get a 1k counter attack as they try to do the dash-thrust attack. I can two-shot enemies that like to spam attacks as long as I poise through them and get that nice counter bonus.

 

You need to cast WHILE looking through them. I don't remember where exactly they are, but they were one of the first items I got so somewhere near Majula.

 

Not trying to be mean but that probably just means you're bad. It shouldn't take ten times. I would suggest going into human form, summoning help, and going through the game co op. Can be quite fun.

 

Coming out of the starter area into Majula, look to the right, i believe you drop down the cliffside around the 2nd or 3rd fence piece on the right.

Zep--

 

Seriously, fuck bell covenant and anybody that is part of it. I'm going to dedicate my second character just to wipe that misarable sonsuvabitches from the face of earth!

 

NOBODY RINGS THE BELL!

Zep--

 

It's definitely one of the best things to happen to low level PvP in the Souls series.

 

When I Bell Bro, sometimes I'll have my lady character with no armor holding the ladle and just (try to) evade if I am the first Bell Bro summoned until #2 shows up.

My favorite time doing this was when a Red invaded, he killed BellBro one...I thought I was toast, So I started punching the bell invader, Red backed me up and after bell invader was killed, I did the prostrate emote and he didn't attack me. I got my Titanite and lived, he got 2 kills.

Zep--

 

Mmm I hadn't thought of that; From wanting to focus more their level designs and overall game approach catering to PvP
Perhaps thrying to reach have more shelflife for players who want to focus on PvP...Call of Duty like ?

 

Another time on the lava bridge, was just trying to help for the boss. Got summoned, was confusing as hell as a pvp battle was going on. 1 host, me, a dragon bro, and a red bro. Didn't realize WTF was going on, as it seemed I could target everyone, so I just jumped in the lava

Zep--

 

I just shot mah havelyn at a dude on the BoB arena bridge and the dude just panicked and rolled off. I guess that's when I started feeling bad about being a triple-buffed SL 350 havelyn lancebro. Those 500 arena kills aren't going to happen otherwise though.

 

The video of criticism is pretty well done and makes some solid points. I don't agree with all of them but I liked most, and I can definitely see the complaints regarding the level connectivity and design. The placement of bonfires and arbitrary obstacles is definitely just... baffling.

I do miss the "look over horizon, see next area" feel that DS 1 had. That was pretty damn sweet.

So far I like some of the ideas behind PVP more but it seems that some of the ideas will not be executed terribly well and overall invasion is low. But, I mostly do not invade so I am ok with that. Being summoned to co-op has worked really well for me so far, but recently my first fuck-up char hit level 123 or so and now I imagine I won't be seeing as much luck. I'll probably have to make a more conservative char later so that I can experience more interaction.

I think that with the way they were presenting the game before it came out, it was very heavily implied this game was aiming more at multiplayer as nearly all games now are. I donno... I definitely see the loss of internal consistency and the attempts at recreation of things DS 1 did failing. I guess I'll have to wait and see how a proper replay pans out, as that's when I really solidified my view of DS 1 and its perks and flaws.

I do think this game has more bullshit arbitrary difficulty tho. I'm also finding no consensus over "which bosses are hard" with other players with all of us having difficulty on different bosses and breezing through other ones. Even for people who are playing similar characters.

 

Level 123 should be still ok for co-op unless your soul memory is through the roof. Matchmaking don't care 'bout no soul level.

 

Darn, Smelter Demon is pretty difficult, and cool. I'm probably underlevelled and undergeared for him, and I imagine stacking fire res would take the edge off his attacks, but still. I was complaining about the lack of imposing bosses, and well, I got my wish. Also, the effect of darkening the rest of the room when he lights up his belly looks fucking awesome with the graphics mod I'm using.

I'm actually a bit confused about the interrupt/poisebreak mechanics in DaS2, although maybe they're the same as in DaS1, but it never mattered in that game.

So, in essence, it feels like some enemies recover from being poisebroken very fast. Purgatory Guardians are one example, but I've since encountered several others. Pyromancers in Earthen Peak for instance, let's take a Bastard Sword and a Large Club for comparative purposes. With the club, just mashing R1, a Pyromancer gets stunned by the first attack, but recovers fast enough to be able to sneak in a combustion before the second attack in the combo hits (therefore oneshotting me, because call of champions trololo). With the bastard sword, I stunlock her to death and she can't do anything. Did this happen in DaS1 with the large club as well? Or are the mechanics the same and there were simply no enemies with such fast attacks in the previous game?

This has one other annoying effect - for most weapons it's faster to start another attack animation than to stop attacking and do something else. So for example, I can stunlock a purgatory guardian with a zweihander, but if I don't have enough stamina to kill him, he'll recover from my last attack AND hit me before I recover and am able to block/roll. Don't really recall this happening in DaS1, or at least not nearly as much.

"Pancaking" on the other hand, seems to work exactly as it used to.

 

Dude go farm the gyrm warriors in doors of pharros for the gyrm greatshield - 100% fire/physical def. Smelter demon is suddenly a pussy.

 

I have been very busy lately and I may still be busy tomorrow, so I didn't get to write the stuff about lore that I intended to write here, I'll probably do so it soon, though.

Anyways this is another post about this game's geography and my theories that the game started development with an area layout similar to Dark Souls 1, and that they changed their mind mid-development for some reason, which resulted in the more fragmented sense of geography that this game now has.

The I Am Undone trailer was released 10 months ago and includes the following shot



Credit here goes to HellkiteDrake, who found that this was actually the Lost Bastille and took a similar shot in-game.



I actually prefer the atmosphere in the second picture, but it's really interesting to note how the lighting and decorations of the first shot match the Forest of Fallen Giants (the overall color palette, the roots). This leads me to believe that originally the Lost Bastille was going to be directly linked to the Forest, and that's why they have matching designs (by directly linked I mean that the areas were positioned next to each other in the world layout and you could walk from one area to the other)

In the final game, the Bastille is only accessible by "warping", either from the eagle's nest in the Forest of Fallen Giants, or taking the boat in No Man's Wharf, and it's another example of a geographical oddity (though not as obvious as the Earthen Peak - Iron Keep connection): the Lost Bastille is actually close to other locations in-game, but completely invisible. I must cite another thing HellkiteDrake found and posted on his blog:

Several area locations do not really make sense, as Emarrel shows on this video:



Like I said before, I'm pretty sure this is the result of a very big change in development we know nothing about. I can't say why they'd change it, but it's very likely that they were building the game in a similar way as Dark Souls 1 and then they decided to change this, some areas they were already working on were moved to other locations, like the Lost Bastille or the Iron Keep. I explained why I think the Iron Keep was also moved in a previous post, I don't remember on what page it is so I'll link my thread on the wiki forums:

Iron Keep's Geography

As always, I don't have solid proof, but I find that this theory makes a lot of sense.

 

Or just dodge forward whenever he makes a noise. That's his key for when he's about to swing. He's actually not that hard once you get his pattern down.

 

I was also able to avoid damage altogether on my Sl1 run by being under 30% load and always dodging left into his swings.

 

Or just skip him and come back later. He's entirely optional.

 

Does being under 30% load actually increase the number of iframes on roll? I thought only Agility changed that.

 

From what I can tell they've broken it into two separate things now. One is a sort of ministun effect when taking any damage at all. Even using something like a rapier vs the mirror knight will cause this on every hit. It won't reset an attack animation, just cause a slight pause for 1-2 frames that makes them look weird and jittery if you're attacking really fast. The second is just the plain old poise mechanic, where building up enough forces them into a stagger animation, but this can't be chained any more (at least on certain enemies), so you actually need to pause with some weapons to stunlock, or you'll hit a second time at the end of the stagger, they'll recover before you and you're fucked. Also, lots of enemies now have 'hyper armor' which is an animation that they can't be poisebroken during. Usually big windup melee attacks or rolls have this, if anything.

Another thing that seems to have changed is which weapons get deflected by shields and how easily. It used to be very bad for things like rapiers/spears/daggers when you hit a decent shield you'd stagger for ages, now it's pretty minor. And before something like a greatsword wouldn't get deflected by fuck all, you just follow through with every swing. Now it'll bounce off relatively dinky shields. Unless you're two handing, that seems much more effective vs shields now.

 

I just know that you roll farther. I was getting hit less so maybe yes? No idea... Your movements seem faster in general if your equip load is less.

 

Agility = invincibility frames, load = distance of roll (if i am not mistaken)

UndetectedButthurt My soul mem is at 29mil apparently; not sure if that is high or not but oh well

I did have like 15 ratbro invasions fail in a row; not sure if that was related.

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was the last 2(3) bosses supposed to be a joke?

also, you can't skip the credits I guess?

I donno man; this game went a bit shitty about when shrine of winter opened. DS 1 breaks down a bit after you get the Lord Vessel (assuming you already did the catacombs) but this was definitely much worse. Dragon Aerie and Dragon Shrine were just... pointless.

Also, I killed Vendrick. He's a bit of a broken fight but once I got the timing of his horizontal swings down it was easy. Just had to play it super conservative; the real threat was not fucking up a dodge because he has so much defense (I'm told giant souls weaken him; I had 4).

One theme that DS 1 handled well was the idea of having a "purpose"; all of the NPCs were out trying to accomplish something and only when their mission ended would they go hollow. Or, rather, when they failed their mission. It was nice to see people grow and depressing to see them fall -- especially when they then blindly attacked you and had to be put down. Something of a parallel to siegmeyer and sieglinde's questline.

In this game the idea of memory/forgetting is explored but it is barely hinted at. A few NPCs forget, one feigns forgetting, but most of all you are just kind of doing shit because... uhh... well, because. You're playing a game, you do shit in a game, duh.

 

Yeah, maybe it's because of the route I took through the game, but the NPC interaction has felt VERY thin here. Most of them I just meet once and then they show up in Madula. And they don't even say new shit as time goes on. The only exceptions really are Vengarl and Tark. They actually reacted when I did stuff relevant to them. Lucatiel showed up a couple more times but only so she can continue whining about herself. But nobody is going hollow, or following any sort of actual sideplot or anything. Rather dissapointing.

By comparison, DaS1 had:

Seigmeyer's continued loss of confidence as you bail him out until he goes hollow and his daughter kills him.
Solaire's descent into madness as his faith is tested again and again while his hopeless search for his own sun fails.
Reah being toyed with by Petrus.
Patches trying to kill you repeatedly.
Logan going insane trying to learn from the Duke's Archives.
Quelanna asking you to put her sister out of her misery.
Pyrodude becoming hollow after you tell him about Quelanna.
And both Priscilla and Gwyndolin having actual personalities.
Plus some implied stuff like Kirk very likely serving the chaos covenant.